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Friday, May 26, 2017

"The Conservative Mind Has Become Diseased" - Michael Gerson

The Gooper candidate for US Representative for Montana, Gianforte, who physically assaulted a journalist, has won the election, and Goopers are celebrating the win.Michael Gerson, former GWB conservative speechwriter, gives us a perfect explanation for why a political party would celebrate the election of a pusillanimous thug -- "the conservative mind has become diseased."That's as good an observation as there is to explain the bizarre behavior that would turn normally mentally healthy people into cheering mobs when they hear news of a thug's election to the US House of Representatives. Conservatives' current enthusiasm for brutish behavior can be directly traced to the reality teevee host who now plays at being POTUS. While campaigning for the presidency, Comrade Trump whipped his followers into frenzies by telling them that the media are "the enemy of the American people." Comrade Trump's simple-minded followers lapped up his demagoguery and reveled in being degraded by his swinish antics.The election of Gianforte of Montana is merely the consequence of conservatives' inability to resist something "uniquely horrible" in American politics -- Donald Trump.Here's Gerson to tell us the sad story of the diseased conservative mind:

“To many observers on the left, the initial embrace of Seth Rich conspiracy theories by conservative media figures was merely a confirmation of the right’s deformed soul. But for those of us who remember that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity were once relatively mainstream Reaganites, their extended vacation in the fever swamps is even more disturbing. If once you knew better, the indictment is deeper. The cruel exploitation of the memory of Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer who was shot dead last summer, was horrifying and clarifying. The Hannity right, without evidence, accused Rich rather than the Russians of leaking damaging DNC emails. In doing so, it has proved its willingness to credit anything — no matter how obviously deceptive or toxic — to defend President Trump and harm his opponents. Even if it means becoming a megaphone for Russian influence. The basic, human questions are simple. How could conservative media figures not have felt — felt in their hearts and bones — the God-awful ickiness of it? How did the genes of generosity and simple humanity get turned off? Is this insensibility the risk of prolonged exposure to our radioactive political culture? If so, all of us should stand back a moment and tend to the health of our revulsion.”

9 comments:

"Gianforte's] altercation Wednesday night was widely laughed off by attendees at his Election Day party, as they stared — some angrily — at the gathered press. When Gianforte apologized to the reporter he assaulted in his speech at the end of the night, an attendee yelled that he was forgiven, as others shook their head, expressing the opinion that he shouldn't have to apologize. Earlier in the evening, the media-hatred was even a punchline of supporters' jokes. Eyeing a reporter's press badge skeptically just after polls closed, one attendee explained, "We’re looking for the right press to flip off." Then she laughed and walked away.

The deplorables won't be denied. A Republican operative "closely involved" in Gianforte's race told Politico on Election Day eve: "When we run shitty candidates it’s going to be hard to win." But win they do. For there is no Republican candidate too scurrilous or mentally unbalanced to alienate the deplorables. In the course of merely a few decades they've taken the 163-year-old party of Lincoln and T.R. and reduced it to the party of Trump and Gianforte, both of whom would have sent Dwight Eisenhower retching."

BlueBull, It's not just liberals who've called out the Goopers and their attachment to thugs and miscreants, many principled conservatives who are appalled at what their party has become are shocked as well.

RN USA, It's not surprising that the rabid righties think assaulting and choking a reporter by a US Representative is " no big deal." They've lost their minds, and they are irredeemable. If a reporter had sucker-punched one of their heroes -- say Sean Hannity -- they would be marching with torches and pitchforks. Don't expect any normal human reaction from that crowd. They're angry, malcontented hypocrites. And truly their days are numbered, since a majority of sane Americans look upon them as aberrations. As does the rest of the civilized world.

"These attacks on individual reporters should be no surprise. In the wider political world, people like Shane Scanlon and Greg Gianforte operate secure in the knowledge of precisely who their audiences hate and why they hate them. They know that those audiences cheered when reporters covering the Ferguson protests got roughed up and busted by the cops, and when that guy got arrested in West Virginia for questioning HHS Secretary Tom Price, and when that reporter got put into a wall while asking questions at an FCC event, and, ultimately, when the 2016 Republican candidate for president spent a good portion of every campaign rally coming right up to the edge of setting a mob loose on the penned-up press at the back of the hall." --Charles Pierce

IRITDon't expect consistency from the Goopers.As I've reported, they've all lost their minds. Cheering on a thug and dismissing an assault as "no big deal" is just one insight into how demented the Goopers have become. Too bad stupidity isn't painful.